Phil Rothfield: Forget Peter V’Landys, here is the real reason for NRL’s blow-out scorelines

It’s easy to blame ARL commission chairman Peter V’landys for the worrying trend of blow-out scorelines – but there’s something else at play, writes Buzz Rothfield.

On Saturday afternoon Canterbury Bulldogs sponsor and hotel billionaire Arthur Laundy sat down to watch his team play Manly on Fox League.

He knew it would be a tough afternoon but by halftime with Manly leading 36-0, Arthur switched over to the AFL and the GWS Giants game against Melbourne.

He switched back and forth throughout the game only because he is loyal.

The AFL was a gripping contest with GWS knocking off the AFL competition leaders.

The NRL was an absolute bludger of a contest — a 66-0 shellacking to open Super Saturday.

Then we get the Gold Coast Titans against the Raiders, 44-6. Then the Knights v the Cowboys, 38-0.

This is 48 hours after the Roosters got pumped 46-0 by Melbourne Storm.

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The Bulldogs dejected as they leave the field after being defeated 66-0 (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

In four games of football that’s a combined scoreboard of 194-6 in a professional sporting competition where there is a salary cap and every club spends the same $9.4 million on players.

Your columnist warned this could be a lopsided competition at the beginning of the year via the annual list of the top-50 players in the NRL.

Six clubs had 34 of the top-50 players. That left just 16 players sprinkled around 10 clubs.

The Bulldogs and Wests Tigers didn’t have a player in the top 50. The Titans, Dragons and Warriors had only one each.

This is why the competition is so uneven.

It’s why people like Laundy are grabbing their remotes and checking out other sports.

It’s very easy to sit back and blame commission chairman Peter V’landys for this mess.

Sure, he’s been the face of all major decisions in recent times.

The six-tackle restarts, the Magic Round crackdown, the blowouts, the 18th man interchange and everything else.

He cops all of the nasty flak on social media around rule changes creating the blowouts.

Josh Jackson and Jeremy Marshall-King after conceding yet another try (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

Yet what about Wayne Pearce. He’s the rugby league ‘expert’ on the commission.

He’s been there since 2012 and drives much of the rule-change policy.

Ten years on the commission is a long time and maybe there is a need for a freshen up.

Maybe it’s up to the clubs, too.

Is it V’landys’ fault that the roster management is so poor at half a dozen clubs?

That the Broncos put Anthony Milford on $1 million, Brodie Croft on $450,000 and Corey Oates on $530,000 to spend most of this year in second grade.

Or that Cronulla was paying Josh Dugan ($850k), Andrew Fifita ($850k) and Chad Townsend ($520k) to play NSW Cup for the old Newtown Jets.

FULL 2021 NRL RICH LIST HERE

Is it V’landys’ fault that the Canberra Raiders allowed John Bateman and George Williams to go? Or that they wasted so much money on Curtis Scott.

Or that coaching and football departments are so poor around the competition that players will take less to go to play for Craig Bellamy, Trent Robinson or Wayne Bennett.

Latrell Mitchell knocked back $1.2 million to play for Michael Maguire at the Wests Tigers and took $400,000 less at the Rabbitohs.

The rule changes have certainly created a faster game with more fatigue and bigger score margins.

The Bulldogs lost 66-0 against the Sea Eagles (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

Teams get on a roll, dominate possession, get a couple of six-agains … then it’s all over.

An incredible 45 per cent of games this year have had 19-point plus score differences. That is a shocking statistic to take to TV networks when you’re trying to do a broadcast deal.

That’s almost doubled from 2017 when only 23 per cent of matches were 19 plus.

The question is whether it’s the rules or the rosters. And the answer would be a bit of both.

Something, however, needs to be done about it.

We need more games like the Sharks v Broncos on Sunday afternoon.

Having a competition where the top four — or even top six — clubs are so superior to the rest will lead to more people like Arthur Laundy switching it off.

V’landys hits back at growing criticism

— Paul Crawley and Martin Gabor

Peter V’landys has fired back at growing criticism that the controversial six-again rule is to blame for this worrying trend of blowout scores: Would you rather watch more tries being scored, or more wrestling?

And he has the backing of South Sydney coach Wayne Bennett, who has taken aim at the management of clubs, blaming them and not the rules for the surge in blowouts this season.

“Clubs have got to take a hell of a lot more responsibility than they’re taking for the way the game is being played. It’s as simple as that,” Bennett said, adding it was impossible to thrive in a “toxic environment”.

It comes after South Sydney’s easy 38-22 victory over Wests Tigers book-ended a weekend of largely lopsided results that kicked off last Thursday when the Melbourne Storm thumped the Roosters 46-0.

Manly put 66 points on the beleaguered Bulldogs.

In between there were two games on Friday night separated by a single point, but on Saturday it was a smash-up from start to finish with a combined 148-6 in the three games. In the other game on Sunday, the Broncos beat the Sharks 26-18.

Taking in the previous weekend’s State of Origin match, the scoreline for the last nine games is 316-76, or an average scoreline of 35-8.

V’landys doesn’t dispute some teams are struggling to keep pace at the moment. But the ARL Commission chairman said critics should not forget why the changes were implemented.

“When I first came on the Commission people said, ‘you have got two objectives’,” V’landys said.

“They said to me, ‘you’ve got to get rid of the wrestle and bring back fatigue’. We’ve done that.

“And now it has opened the game up. And with the open game you are going to have higher scores.

“I am not saying it is the only factor, but it is contributing to higher scores. But it brings the brilliant players out.

“What do they want us to do, go back to the stop-start game with the wrestle?

“Or do you want an open and free game?”

Gold Coast put the Raiders to the sword.

There is no question when the NRL returned from the Covid-19 shutdown last year many were celebrating the new changes that put less emphasis on the wrestle and slowing down the ruck and more on attacking rugby league and greater fatigue.

That wonderful match between Melbourne and Roosters last July was rated arguably the greatest club game ever, and there were plenty more celebrated thanks largely to the emphasis on attack.

But as time rolls on many are now starting to question if the change has gone too far and instead of a better spectacle, there is just now a growing gap between the haves and have-nots.

There is no question the teams up the top of the ladder have handled the changes best but there is also no denying it is getting harder and harder to fight back against a run of possession.

Bennett said clubs had to wear the blame for the lopsided results in 2021.

“Clubs and their management…are absolutely adding to the scoreboards,” he said.

“You (the media) keep blaming the players, but you’re so far off the mark it doesn’t matter.

“You’re not in clubland and you don’t know how it works. Until the club itself gets its management in order, their whole ship – the clubs, the players – will not be able to respond.

Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow and the Cowboys couldn’t even score a point against the Knights.

“Management of clubs has a huge result on performances at the moment.

“I’m not going to name names, and I’m not going to name clubs, but if you look at some of the decisions they’ve made with the things that’ve happened to players, I wouldn’t want to be at that club.

“I know if I was at that club then I wouldn’t be playing very well.”

The super coach said anyone in a working environment would struggle to produce their best if the conditions around them weren’t up to scratch.

That involves recruitment and retention, work ethic, training methods and the overall culture of clubs, something that the bottom clubs have all failed miserably to manage this season.

“Not one of you guys in this room could go to a toxic environment to work and do your best work,” he said.

“You’re professional men in your roles as journalists, and it doesn’t happen for you. It’s no different in a football team, but the easy blame is to put the blame on the players because the team’s not playing well.

“You’ve got to look deeper than that because that’s where the problem is. You just look at some of the transfers and movement of players at clubs within the last month even, it’s pretty ordinary stuff. Until clubs learn to manage themselves better, it’s not going to get better.”

One suggestion put forward to try and turn the tide was making the scoring team kick off instead of the defending team restarting play.

V’landys said there were no plans to try and make any immediate changes but all ideas would be discussed at the end of the season.

“Look, you had the two games on Friday night with the one-point margin,” he added.

“On the Saturday night you had the complete opposite.

“But there are a multitude of reasons for that.

“I am not denying the fact the six-again has certainly had an impact.

“The game is faster because you can’t slow down the ruck.”